The Command to Leave Sinai and the Tent of Meeting (Exodus 33:1-11)

1 The Lord said to Moses, “Depart; go up from here [after a temporary ten-month stay], you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give it.’ [Sinai is not more important than the land of promise.] 2 I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. [Verse 2 repeats promises already made by God.] 3 Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” [What began as a positive sentence ends with a warning. God is going to limit his presence with his people because his intolerance of sin would cause him to destroy them on the way. They so wanted more of his presence that they constructed a golden calf. As part of their punishment, now they will have even less of him.]

4 When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments [the antithesis of the prior revelry]. 5 For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments [permanently], that I may know what to do with you.’” [It sounds as if more punishment is on the way.] 6 Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb [Sinai] onward. [In the Ancient Near East, mourning involved appearance as well as emotion. What happens when the Lord removes his presence? Consider the Israelites past and what happens in the future.]

7 Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. [This is not the tabernacle, which was to be set up in the middle of the camp. This is another tent for Moses and his communication with God only. There were no sacrifices or communal activity.] And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. 8 Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up, and each would stand at his tent door, and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. 9 When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses [and the people would see this special relationship their leader had with God]. 10 And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, each at his tent door. 11 Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. [The tabernacle was placed on hold and would not yet be central to community life. Instead, Moses, who did not participate in idolatrous worship, was the only one who met with God. The rest of the Israelites would worship him at a distance looking from their tent doors to the tent of meeting outside the camp. If an Israelite wanted to inquire of the Lord, he had to walk outside the camp in the open, marking his loyalty to God. At least, however, God had not abandoned them.]